TREASURE HUNT

3. Criteria to evaluate a project:

1. Allows for a variety of learning styles
2. "Real" world oriented - learning has value beyond the demonstrated competence of the learner
3. Risk-free environment - provides positive feedback and allow choice
4. Encourages the use of higher order thinking skills and learning concepts as well as basic facts
5. Utilizes hands-on approaches.

4. How to run a project:

• Projects should be based on standards, have clear goals, and promote interdisciplinary content.
• Students should make the decisions for all aspects of the project-from selecting a topic to designing the project to organizing work to presenting results.
• Students should learn collaborative skills, such as team research, group decision making, relying on each others' work, and providing, accepting, and integrating feedback.
• Projects should have a connection to the real world by focusing on issues that affect students' lives or communities, and by using realistic methods such as polling, researching, and experimenting.
• Projects should incorporate a nontraditional approach to time on task. More time facilitates the freedom to experiment and learn from trial and error and opportunities for in-depth study.

5. Steps to create a project:

• Identify a project idea. Define specific project tasks, the parameters for student decision making, and the outcomes that will provide adequate ways for students to demonstrate learning.
• Determine the time frame.
• Plan activities by reviewing other projects. For example, take a look at WebQuests or TrackStar projects for insights, guidelines, and templates. Identify specific goals, tasks, and outcomes so that students will understand what they are going to learn, what the parameters are, and what the results will be. Check that your goals meet standards and other requirements. If you are working with one or more other teachers, make sure that everyone agrees on all aspects of the project.
• Plan for assessment.
• Start off the project with the students, making sure that deadlines and schedules are clear, and provide guidance, assistance, and encouragement when students need it.
• At the project's end, have students share results and reflect on outcomes.

6. Time and teachers roles.

It is true that projects do not lend themselves to covering a laundry list of topics, as too often happens in the classroom. But in the case of good education, less is more. If you are pressed for time and need to include many topics in your instruction during a year, you may want to think about the concept of "uncoverage." This means making a deliberate decision about topics that you want to teach in depth versus topics that can be simply "covered." What parts of your curriculum can be easily and successfully handled through lectures or textbook assignments? What parts require more depth? Identify those topics that reflect the most important ideas and concepts in your curriculum and incorporate those topics into projects. Those are the topics with which you want students to grapple. The remaining topics you can deal with through direct instruction.

Teachers act as facilitators

Inquiry Skills and Strategies Applied To Social Studies

In an age of information literacy, an educated person needs to master inquiry or problem-solving skills. Multiple sources provide you with the basics on using inquiry and problem-solving skills, including the Four Stages in Project Inquiry in this web site and the inquiry skills listed below from the Guidelines for Geographic Education in Elementary and Secondary School (Geography for Life: National Geography Standards. Washington, DC: National Geographic Research and Exploration.)

1) Asking Geographic Questions

Successful inquiry includes ability and desire to ask, speculate about, and answer questions about why things are where they are and how they got there.

Examples of Strategic Thinking & Action

General inquiry Where is it located? Why is it there? What is significant about its location? In what ways is its location related to the locations of other people, places, and environments? Identify social studies issues, define social studies problems, and pose social studies questions.

Specific strategies Analyze newspaper and magazine articles and identify geographic issues and problems evident in those articles. Ask questions about geographic problems in local issues relating to housing, traffic, or land use and then summarize these problems by preparing written or oral statements, maps, and graphs.

2) Acquiring Social Studies Information

Social studies is information about locations, the human and physical characteristics of those locations, and the geographic activities and conditions of the people who inhabit those places.

To answer social studies questions, students should gather information using multiple venues, sources, and methods - - such as

• interviews
• maps
• old television shows
• library

Examples of Strategic Thinking &Action

General inquiry Locate, gather, and process information from different sources, both primary and secondary. Make sure to make use of maps that are student generated. Make and record observations about the physical and human characteristics of a place. Use a variety of research skills to locate and collect geographic data.

Specific strategies Read aerial photographs to recognize patterns from the air and identify the patterns on a topographic map of the same area. Take photographs and/or shoot videos of human features (architecture) and physical features (landforms and vegetation) of the landscape. View pictures of the same area during each season of the year and record your observations.

3) Organization of Information

Once acquired, the information should be organized and displayed in ways that help analysis and interpretation. Different types of data should be arranged, separated, and classified in visual, graphic forms: photographs, charts, aerial photographs, tables. Maps play a key role in social studies inquiry, but also important are graphs, tables, spreadsheets, and time lines.

Visuals are especially enhanced when accompanied by clear oral or written communication.

Since creativity and skill are needed to arrange social studies information effectively, decisions about color, design, and clarity make for wonderful learning opportunities for all students.

Examples of Strategic Thinking & Action

General inquiry Prepare maps to display geographic, economic, or population information. Construct graphs, diagrams, or tables to display geographic information.

Specific strategies Use weather data to produce climagraphs. Use computer programs to graph data from geographic databases. Create a table to compare data on a specific topic for different geographic regions (e.g., birth and death rates for nations in South America).

THE BIG QUESTION:
I think it would be a little bit difficult but not impossible.